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- Blog Post
CBO released an economic and budget issuebrief todaythat discusses thefactors underlying the decline in manufacturing employment over the past several years. The manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy has experienced substantial job losses since 2000. During the recession of 2001 and its immediate aftermath, employment in the manufacturing sector fell by about 2.9 million jobs, or 17 percent. Even after overall employment began to improve in 2004, the decline in manufacturing employment persisted.
- Blog Post
Today, CBO is releasing two volumes that focus on health care issues: Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals and Budget Options, Volume 1: Health Care. These two volumes build upon CBOs previous analytical work on health insurance and health care financing issues and are intended to assist the Congress as it contemplates possible changes-- both large and small-- to federal health programs and thenation's health insurance and health care systems.
- Blog Post
Today, CBO released a cost estimate for H.R. 7321, the Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act, as passed by the House of Representatives last night. We estimate that enacting H.R. 7321 would increase net direct spending by $1.7 billion over the 2009-2018 period, mostly for loans to domestic automobile manufacturers. An additional $7.0 billion in potential costs would be subject to future appropriation action.
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Today (December 5), CBO released a letterat the request of House Majority Leader Hoyer analyzing the budgetary effects of two legislative proposals: S. 3715, the Auto Industry Emergency Bridge Loan Act, as introduced on November 20, 2008; and draft legislation released by the House Committee on Financial Services (and posted on that committees Web site) on November 17, 2008.
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Yesterday, CBO released its Monthly Budget Review. CBO estimates that the Treasury will report a federal budget deficit of $408 billion for the first two months of fiscal year 2009, $253 billion higher than the deficit recorded through November of last year. This estimate includes $191 billion disbursed for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) during the first two months of the fiscal year.
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CBO has been privileged, for the past two years, to have Peter Orszag as its Director. During that time, heworked tirelessly to ensure that the Congress received the timely, high quality,budget and economic information and policy analysis that it needs to address the important public policy issues facing our nation. He alsoexpanded the agency's focus on key areaslike climate change and health care, with particular emphasis on the long-term fiscal threat posed by rising health care costs.
- Blog Post
Today President-elect Obama announced his intention to nominate me as director of the Office of Management and Budget. I am therefore resigning as director of CBO and this will be my final blog entry.
- Blog Post
Today CBO released the Monthly Budget Review.
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Tonight Im giving the Goldman Lecture in Economics at Wellesley College. (Here are the slides from my talk.) The topic is climate changestarting with an overview of the problem and then discussing a range of possible approaches to reducing the risks involved. As Ive noted before with regard to health care, our political system doesnt deal well with gradual, long-term problems. And climate change would definitely qualify as one of those gradual, long-term problems.
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The 2008 deficit totaled $455 billion, roughly $17 billion more than the $438 billion estimated by CBO on October 7th.That difference does not reflect any economic or programmatic developments; rather, it reflects an accounting adjustment by the Department of the Treasury, which increased the outlay and deficit figures for June 2008 by $17 billion.